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Hypathia - Foucaldian Perspective On Race and Sex
Hypathia - Foucaldian Perspective On Race and Sex
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Sex, Race,and Biopower:
A FoucauldianGenealogy
LADELLE MCWHORTER
FOUCAULT'SGENEALOGY OF SEX
Not until the very end of The Historyof Sexuality,Volume 1, does Foucault
discusssex per se. Until that point he has limited his analysisto sexuality.But
finally, in the last chapter of the book, he raises the issue through the voice
of an imaginarycritic who complains that he "speaksof sexuality as if sex did
not exist" and that he passes over "the thing on the basis of which this sexu-
alizationwas able to develop,... namely,sex" (1978, 151).The critic goes on:
40 Hypatia
FOUCAULT'SANALYTICS OF POWER
emerge out of power strugglesis a creation of power.So are the people who
inhabit those situations.
These last points are arguablythe most significant aspects of Foucault's
analytics of power, so they may require some clarification. Let me offer a
metaphor.In the book Awakenings,Dr. Oliver Sacks talks aboutpatients with
a form of Parkinson'sDisease that produceshorriblemuscle spasms.However,
the neurologicalimpulsesto the musclesare so rapidand so intense, but also
so widespreadand conflicting,that the patient'sbody becomesrigid.The rigid-
ity-the stillness-is not a state of rest;on the contrary,it is a state that results
froma deadlockedtension of conflictingneurologicalforces(Sacks 1990, 6-7).
Sometimespowerstrugglesare like that. An equilibriumis achieved;the forces
in play in a given situation oppose each other repeatedlyin exactly the same
ways at exactly the same points, so that the situation looks stable.8In such
cases, the exercise of power producessocial forms, institutions, routines, and
even beliefs, theories, and self-images.
Consider high school again. Various forces are at work there over time.
Teachersand studentstry out differentstrategies.Agendasshift. But an equilib-
riumusuallyemerges.A daily routine is established.Repeatedevents of power
bringabouta certainshapeof things. Butmorethan that, these repeatedevents
of powerproducenot only institutionalizedroutinesbut also the sortsof people
who participatein them. High schools arenotoriouslyclique-ish,but they areso
partlybecause they tend to producecertain human types over and over again.
One has only to consider the nerd, a real social phenomenon, but one that is
absolutelyunthinkableoutsidethe arrangementsof powerthat areour modern
educational institutions.The nerd is a personalitytype producedwithin a set
of powerrelations;likewisethe juveniledelinquent,the retardedchild, and the
"at-risk"child. These are categoriesof human being that have been invented
in institutionalizedarrangementsof power,including school systemsand the
psychological discourses that support them. Children are identified at early
ages as, for example, "learningdisabled"or "gifted"and treatedas such. They
come to understandthemselvesin relationto such categories.They come to be
the people they are identifiedas. Powerproducesselves, Foucaultsays. Power
makes us who we are.
Power,then, is productiveof situations and identities, which means that
as configurationsof powershift, social structuresand individualsenses of self
shift as well. Foucaultlocatedsome importanthistoricalshifts in configurations
of power in various institutions such as schools, hospitals, and the military.9
He identifiedone especiallyimportantgeneralchange in powerarrangements
aroundthe year 1800. Through the late seventeenth and earlyeighteenth cen-
turies,the populationof France(Foucault'smain focus) increaseddramatically.
At the same time, there were majorinnovations in technology and finance.
Factoriessprangup; new weaponssuch as the riflewere invented. The upshot
44 Hypatia
was this: There were many more people to deal with, and authoritieswanted
them to performtasksthat requiredmuch moreskill than everbefore;they had
to be trainedto use new technologies efficiently,and at the same time they had
to be rendereddocile and obedient while implementingthem. Officialsin vari-
ous institutions independentlybegan to invent new waysto managepeople.
Earlier,in the seventeenth century, people (such as Descartes) tended to
think of human bodies (again, the anchor point for the exercise of power)as
machines. The science of biology had not come into existence yet. Natural
scientiststreatedbodies as structuresthat wereto be understoodwith reference
to the relativelocation of their partsin space, like the gearsof a clock. Training
a person to use a machine was reallyjust adjustingone machine to "interface"
efficientlywith another machine. And since most machines werefairlysimple,
this was just a matterof making surethe sizes of the two machines'partswere
well suitedto each other and then repeatingthe rightgesturesuntil the desired
pattern of movement was established. For example, a schoolmastergave his
pupilsquill pens that matchedthe size of their hands, and he physicallyplaced
their hands, arms,heads, backs, and feet in the best posturefor writing.Then
he had them copy lettersuntil they got the knack of producingthem according
to the standard.Likewise,a militaryofficergavemilitiamenmusketsof the right
length and weight for their arms, and he physicallyplaced their feet, backs,
heads, shoulders,arms, and hands in the best posture for firing.Then he had
them fire at a targetsuntil they got the knack of hitting them.
Graduallythrough the last quarterof the eighteenth century managersof
largepopulationsof pupils, soldiers,sick people, laborers,and others began to
rethink this mechanical model of the body to be disciplined, with an eye to
developingnew techniques for acting on people'sbehaviorand modeling it to
fit new technologies. The result of this rethinking was a new conception of
bodies.'0Bodies were no longer thought of primarilyas machines, collections
of parts that interactedin space. Instead,bodies were thought of as organisms
with functions, temporalprocessesthat developed over time. Disciplinarians
and managerssaw themselvesnot as trying to reconfigurebodies in space but
as tryingto redirectbodies in time, to influencetheir development.By the turn
of the nineteenth century this idea that bodies wereessentiallydevelopmental
was having a huge impacton all sortsof disciplines,practices,and institutions.
It absolutelyrevolutionizedthe waypeople thought abouttheir workand about
themselves. Bodies were seats of natural developmentalforces that play out
in response to environmentalstimuli. If the stimuli were managed in certain
ways,that developmentalprocesscould be controlled,channeled, and used to
producehighly skilled, very obedient functioning soldiers,laborers,scholars,
or whateverthe situation called for.
Newton and Leibniz invented calculus in the late seventeenth century.
Beforethe beginning of the nineteenth, that invention had been put to use to
LadelleMcWhorter 45
NOTES
The more general point that white people seem to be un-racedhas been made many
times-see for example Lewis Gordon, "Race,Sex, and Matricesof Desire in an Anti-
black World:An Essayin Phenomenology and Social Role,"in Zack 1997, 122-and
was made very soundly and thoroughlyin Frankenberg1993.
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62 Hypatia